Nothing funny about feldspar

The only time I’ve ever dragged a picture off of Cute Overload:
Moosday: um—Fox Terrier or bebe cow?

I have only a few more things to do with my mom’s estate (repaying my loans, court and lawyer fees, that sort of thing), and I could really use the money I’m supposed to get… but I find it so incredibly difficult to fill in those last checks.

I’ve been avoiding this final accounting stuff for a month now, and now this is the last stuff I have to do before I package it all up and give it to the court. I don’t know if I’ll even get it started today, even though I’ve blocked out my time to do this sort of paperwork.

Who’d've thought balancing an account could be so damned hard?

Last night, a dreary cold rainy Sunday, we opened a bottle of

“Sexto”
Terra Alta
Denominació D’Origen
2004 Spain

($8.24 on sale)

The label says it’s made of Grenache 33%, Carignan 30%, Tempranillo 20%, Lledoner Pelut Noir 6%, Carbernet Sauvignon 6%, Syrah 5%.

What the heck is “Lledoner Pelut Noir”? Apparently, it’s a “cousin of grenache” and it only appears in this wine.

I found this to be very tasty. Full, rich, and very, very tannic. Really. Like eating a sponge — my mouth went dry immediately. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was a really nice wine to drink on a dreary day. It would probably be too much on a warm day like today, but yesterday we drank it all up yum.

I would try to get it again — assuming it wasn’t on special because it’s being discontinued…

Plagioclase thought it was more sour than dry, but I noticed he had his fair share.

Orthoclase: A
Plagioclase: (undetermined)

When I was but a lass, a schoolmate of mine had a photography instructor who filed the edges of her negative carrier so that the viewer could see that the printed image was composed “in camera” instead of “in darkroom.” She felt that gave her art a sense of truthiness, to use the current term, and was somehow superior to that of photogs who cropped and dodged and burned and did all that darkroom stuff to get the image to say what they wanted.

We take that kind of manipulation for granted, especially with digital images. Who hasn’t sharpened or adjusted levels or removed red-eye in their digital photos? We’re not changing reality, we’re enhancing it — making it say more of what we want it to say, and less of what we don’t want it to.

I was thinking about the nature of editing and reality when I listened to one of the producers of Planet Earth remarking that they filmed the animals separately from acquiring the sounds. “It’s authentic,” he said, even though it wasn’t recorded at the same time as the film (I paraphrase).

Is it? Well, if you look at the definition in my little dictionary here on my computer — “made or done … in a way that faithfully resembles an original” — I suppose so. But why does it bother me so? Why am I reminded of the fight between Holly Hunter and William Hurt in Broadcast News when she realizes that his tear was filmed after the interview?

How far is too far when one is trying to depict some facet of reality? I’m thinking food styling in magazines is too far, for example. Is there a “not far enough”?

[Other ways we take editing for granted: things in writing. We don't expect to write the Kubla Khan upon waking (at least most of us don't), and I at least can't get through a blog post without some backspacing and insertions...]

One of the places I hang out online is going through its annual semi-annual quarterly meltdown, and I wonder if it’s an inevitable process, this ebb-and-flow of anger, misunderstanding and despair, with people announcing they’re going away, others singing dirges, and still more trying to rah-rah the crowd into “being nice.”

It tires one out. This time, thankfully, I’m not anywhere near involved in it (having seen the wreck coming when it started months ago, go prescient me). And it will blow over (likely with little substantive change), once there’s been enough gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands and promises to do better.

Just in time to get us ready for next quarter’s fooferaw.